by Natalie Hyde
At least I knew where I was again. The rest would be easy. I would follow my bushwhacked trail to the second post, and the laneway out of here was just beyond that. Finally something was going my way.
There was a thumping noise behind me. A shadow fell across the post as whatever made that noise moved into view. My heart stopped. I knew I spoke too soon about things going my way. I was a Dearing. Things never went my way.
Towering over me, with teeth bared and eyes glinting, was Randy. “Thanks for showing me where the posts for my new claim are, kid,” he said. Man, I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face.
He jingled something in his pocket and then laughed as he pulled out some metal claim tags. He walked over to the post, set the tags on top and then used a fierce-looking hunting knife to pry my tag off and start banging one of his tags on with the handle of the knife.
He was stealing our claim! To have come this far only to have it ripped right out of my hands? I couldn’t believe this was happening.
I tried to think of a plan — some way to stop him — but he was huge and had bulging muscles and I was a scrawny kid. I wondered if I could pick up a branch and hit him over the head or something, but he kept one eye on me the whole time.
It all looked hopeless. Until I smelled the onions. That could only mean one thing: mama moose was near.
Randy noticed the smell too. “Is someone having a barbeque?” he asked, sniffing the air. Then he saw something. “Don’t look now, kid, but there’s a ferocious wild animal coming to get you.” He laughed and pointed. I looked to my right and saw a baby moose trying to navigate the bushes with his ridiculously gangly legs.
Randy was slapping his leg with laughter, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up. There is one universal truth about baby wild animals — admire them, take pictures of them, talk baby talk to them if you really have to, but never, NEVER come between a baby and its mama.
And that’s exactly what Randy had done. The baby was in front of Randy and the smell of onions was definitely coming from behind him. I took a sideways step away from the moose calf. I didn’t want to be in the middle of that mess.
There was a snort and a stomp and suddenly Mama Onion-Breath came into view. She was not happy. In fact, her eyes were pinned on Randy with a look only a mother whose baby is in danger can have. I have to admit, I got a lump in my throat at the fierceness with which that mama was protecting her little one. Lucky baby moose.
I took another step out of the way. That moose looked even bigger now that I was on the ground and not in a tree. The calf bawled. Mama snorted. Randy started to sweat. He looked from the baby, to the mama, to the baby and back to the mama. She didn’t even like him looking at her baby; she started charging. Randy took off toward the creek with mama hot on his heels. The baby staggered after them.
This was my chance to escape! I was about to sprint for the road when I saw them — Randy’s tags. One was half on our post and the other was sitting on top. I could hear Randy yelling and the moose’s footsteps pounding and the baby bawling, so they weren’t that far away, but I had to fix this.
I ripped Randy’s tag off. I found mine where it had landed on the ground and used my hammer to pound it back into its place on the post. Then I grabbed both of Randy’s tags and took off toward the laneway.
I slowed down only once, when I was almost to the lane and there was wonderful black, swampy ground on my left. I tossed those tags as far into the murky water as I could and heard them splash. Then I sped up again, running as fast as my burning lungs would let me.
I was coming to the end of the lane; the main road was in sight. I prayed that Vinnie would be on his way with Shard. I heard an engine and crossed my fingers. But it wasn’t Vinnie. It was the engine of Randy’s car.
I got to the highway and took off down the road toward Dawson. It was no use. Randy caught up to me, slammed his car into park, hopped out and grabbed me. I was breathing so hard I couldn’t even stand up straight.
“Not so fast, pipsqueak. Where are my tags?”
I forced myself up and looked him square in the eyes. “They’re in the swamp.”
Randy’s face twisted in rage. “Then I guess you’re going for a muddy swim, aren’t you?”
Before I could answer, we heard another car coming.
“One word, just one word,” Randy said in my ear, “and you’ll regret it.”
It was a cop. Can you believe that? Any other time I’d be thrilled to see a cop come and rescue me from a loony-tune like Randy, but this was jumping from one disaster to another. If I said nothing, I’d probably drown or die of hypothermia wading through the swamp, and then lose the claim. Or if I did say something, the police would haul me off to Child Protective Services.
“Remember what I said, kid,” Randy said again, loosening his grip on my arm slightly and pasting his fake smile on his face.
The officer got out of his cruiser and came over to us. “Everything okay here?”
“Oh, sure, kid just needed to pee,” Randy said.
“That right, son?” the officer asked me.
“No, it isn’t. This guy is trying to kidnap me!”
That’s right. I would rather go into foster care than lose the claim now. My dad still needed somewhere to go and something to do.
The officer looked to Randy, whose fake smile was replaced with a dark look. “Can I talk to you over here, sir?” he asked, pulling Randy away from me. “Do you have some ID on you?”
Randy was pulling his wallet out and shooting me looks of hatred.
I took a nonchalant step down the road.
“Stay right there, son,” the officer said, noticing. “I need to speak to you next.”
So much for making a run for it. My shoulders sagged. I was tired, cold and hungry. Where was Vinnie? Or Shard? Or even Fiona?
Randy’s voice was getting louder and louder. The officer didn’t seem to like that, so he opened the back door of his cruiser and made Randy get inside. Then he shut the door and spoke into the two-way radio on his shoulder. He nodded at whatever was said and walked over to me.
I heard the motor of another vehicle behind me, coming from the direction of Dawson. I couldn’t see who it was because I was facing the cop, but it had to be Vinnie. All I had to do was stall for a few more minutes.
“So now I want you to tell me what happened,” the officer said to me. “But first I need your name.”
My name? Oh brother. What should I tell him? I almost didn’t know anymore. Was I Chris, Dirk or Wally? I figured I had better stick with the same name I gave the other cop — Wally Marrien.
I opened my mouth to lie …
“His name is Christopher Dearing,” a voice from behind me said.
I spun around. It wasn’t Vinnie. It was Mrs. CPS holding up a file folder.
“And he’s a runaway,” she added.
The cop looked back at me. I shook my head, but tears were pricking at the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t believe it was going to end like this. With Randy stuck in the cop car and my tags still on the claim posts, all I had to do was get to town and tell Vinnie it was time to register the claim, and it was ours.
“Is that true?” the officer asked me.
I had to swallow a few times, my throat was so tight. “No, I’m not running away. I’m running to,” I said.
“Running ‘to’?” the officer asked, looking confused.
Mrs. CPS came closer. “He is a minor with no guardian, and he is under my jurisdiction,” she told the officer.
“And who are you?”
“Mrs. Olsen, Family and Children’s Services, Whitehorse,” she said, handing him a card.
While the officer read her card, there was the sound of yet another engine. This time it was a pickup coming out of the Amundsons’ lane.
The pickup pulled over to where we were standing and Neils got out. It was ridiculous the number of vehicles stopped in the road in the middle of nowhere, and not one of them was Vinnie’s.
“What’s going on here, Mark?” Neils asked the officer.
“Hi, Neils,” the officer said. “Just sorting it out.”
“Is the boy in trouble?” Neils asked, looking over at me.
“He’s a runaway.”
“Dirk,” Neils said, “is this true?”
“His name is Christopher,” Mrs. Olsen repeated.
Neils looked at me, confused. “I thought you said your name was Dirk?”
I shook my head. Now the tears flowed and I could do nothing to stop them.
The officer looked at me sternly. “Was that man really trying to kidnap you?”
I guess now that I had been caught in one lie, everything I said was questionable. I nodded.
“He followed me up here. He’s a pickpocket. He threatened me.”
The officer made a note on his notepad. “Threatened you with what?”
“He’s trying to steal our claim. He ripped my tag off the post and tried to put his own on. He told me he was going to put me in the swamp.”
The officer looked back at the cruiser with Randy in the back, his face pressed against the window, black with anger.
“Well, he certainly is bad news,” the officer said. “I’ve run his name. He has outstanding warrants and he’s under arrest. He’ll be kept overnight in Dawson and then flown back to Whitehorse to face charges.”
Then the officer looked at me. “And what about you? What is your real name? No lying now.”
“Chris Dearing,” I said, hating every syllable.
“You’re a Dearing?” Neils said, his mouth open in surprise. “So that’s why you came to Cottonwood Creek? You’re a relative of Wally’s?”
“He was my grandfather,” I said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” Neils asked.
I didn’t answer. I was done talking. I couldn’t explain to him how it felt to be a Dearing, and how much I wanted to get away from that name, how embarrassed I was by it all.
“So, what do we do with you now?” the officer asked, folding his arms.
“He’s coming back with me,” Mrs. Olsen said.
“To go where?” the officer asked. “You certainly can’t start driving back to Whitehorse tonight. You’ll hit a moose or a caribou for sure, and that’s if you don’t end up driving off the road.”
“Well,” Mrs. Olsen stammered, “I, um, will have to get a room, I guess, and I’ll have to sleep outside his door so I can make sure he doesn’t take off overnight.”
“A room? Tonight? Are you kidding?” Neils said. “It’s the annual Top of the World Highland Games. There isn’t a room available in the entire district.”
“Well, could you hold him overnight?” she asked the cop.
“I’m not locking a kid up,” he said quickly.
Really? I thought that was the first thing he’d want to do. Maybe they grew cops differently up here.
Mrs. Olsen stammered some more. The cop folded his arms. Randy was pounding on the window of the cruiser and yelling something no one could make out.
“I have the solution,” Neils said. “You can both stay with Anna and me. We have plenty of room.”
“Will it be secure?” Mrs. Olsen asked, suspicion in her voice.
“If you are asking if Dir … I mean, Chris, will run away, I think the answer is no, heh?” Neils said, looking at me with his eyebrows raised.
I looked at the ground. “I have nowhere left to run.”
“So, it’s settled,” Neils said. “Let’s get out of the cold night air. Anna has a fine stew ready.”
“Thanks, Neils,” the officer said. “I’ll take care of this one.” He gestured back at Randy.
I climbed in Neils’s pickup truck. No way I was getting in Mrs. Olsen’s car. We didn’t speak all the way down the laneway to his house.
There was nothing left to say.
CHAPTER 24
WITH A WAVE OF HIS HAND
I didn’t want to open my eyes. Once I opened them, I’d have to face the day. If I kept them closed I could stay wrapped in this cocoon of mountain-fresh-smelling sheets and forget the mess I was in.
I heard the knob turning and a squeak as the door opened a bit. “So, Christopher, breakfast is ready,” a soft voice said from outside my door. It sounded like Neils’s wife, Anna, who I had met only briefly the night before as she kept refilling my bowl with stew. “Christopher?”
I sighed and opened my eyes. Anna had stuck her head in and was smiling at me. I smiled and gave a little wave of understanding. It wasn’t her fault my life was a chaotic mess.
I dragged myself out of bed and put on some clothes from my backpack. No hope of avoiding the horrors of foster care and a lost claim, I guess. This is where Shard would tell me to quit whining already. I wondered where she was and if she was worried about me because I never came back to town. Did she sleep in the truck on the flour sacks again last night? Was Fiona’s bike fixed? Was Vinnie in trouble with the cops? It felt as if I had been away from them for days, not hours.
I made my way down the hallway to the kitchen, which smelled like pancakes. My mouth watered at the thought of them. Just beyond the kitchen was an eating area with a full wall of windows overlooking a neat yard with a little gazebo in the middle. It had a garden gnome peeking out of the flowers around it. I hate garden gnomes; they give me the creeps.
Around the table sat Neils, Anna and Mrs. Olsen. They seemed to be deep in conversation when I arrived but they all stopped talking and looked up when I came in. Anna pulled out a chair for me next to her and pointed to a stack of pancakes in the middle of the table.
“The ones on the top are chocolate chip,” she said. “And there is real maple syrup here in this jug.”
I know it was rude of me not to even say good morning to anyone, but I wasn’t in a polite mood. My life was about to go down the toilet, so they would just have to forgive me for not being social.
I took one pancake and put it on my plate. I was planning on eating just the one, but I have to tell you, that thing was so soft and tasty and warm, and the syrup was so yummy, that I took one after another after another until there was only one pancake left on the plate.
“So you said your family has been mining here for a long time, Neils,” Mrs. Olsen said.
“Yup, for the better part of a hundred years. Almost as long as his family,” he said, nodding his head in my direction.
“It must be a hard life,” she went on.
“Well, a little hard, but good honest work never did anyone any harm.”
Then Mrs. Olsen turned to me. “And why is it our department had to chase you all the way up here, Christopher?”
I just shook my head. There was no use in trying to explain it all. She would never understand.
“I think he wants to be a miner like his grandfather,” Neils said. “Get the old Dearing claim back.”
“Is that right?” she asked me. “You think you can mine a gold claim at your age?”
“Not by myself,” I said. “With my dad.” I lifted my head and stared at her, daring her to say something bad about him.
“And he knows about this plan? He wants to come up here and mine?”
I nodded.
She sighed. “So why isn’t this in the file? Did you tell your caseworker about these plans? Maybe we could have helped.”
“You didn’t want to help,” I said, really holding back the tears now. “You just wanted to put me in foster care.”
“Christopher, we are not in the business of breaking up families; we try to keep them together. But whether you like it or not, your dad was going to jail and there was no one to look after you. At least temporarily. And you deserve to be looked after.”
“I don’t need any help.”
She sighed again. “Everyone needs help at some time or another. The idea of foster care was to give you a place to stay until your dad got on his feet again. If we had known about this gold mining thing, maybe we could have worked something out. But now �
�”
“But now what?” Neils broke in. “The boy and his father are trying to make a go of it. Miners have been coming up here for hundreds of years with a lot less than they have.”
“Yes, but he’s underage. He can’t just squat up here waiting for his father to get his act together.”
“No, he can’t,” said Anna, pulling herself up straight. “But he can stay here with us.”
Neils slapped his hand on the table so hard that the syrup jug jumped. “Yes, of course he can.”
I looked up in surprise. Would they do that for me after I lied about my name and why I was up here? I could be right next door to our claim!
“No he can’t,” Mrs. Olsen said.
Leave it to her to suck the life out of everything.
“Why not?” Anna asked.
“Because you aren’t certified foster parents.”
Neils made a pfft noise. “So certify us. We raised five kids of our own and they’re doing fine. Everyone in Dawson knows me if you need references.”
“It takes more than that. You have to apply, then there are interviews and a mandatory course …”
Neils waved a hand. “You can fix all that. In the meantime, the boy can stay here.”
Mrs. Olsen was getting red in the face. “You can’t just wave your hand and become foster parents …”
Neils leaned across the table, putting his face close to hers. “He’s just going to run away from wherever you drag him and come back here again. If you are serious about helping him and his dad, this is where he needs to be.” He slapped his hand on the table to reinforce his point. Then he got up and went out the back door into the yard, whistling. I guess the meeting was over.
Mrs. Olsen finished her coffee and looked at Anna. “I’ll see what I can do.” Anna just smiled and nodded. I got the feeling Neils got his way a lot.
Mrs. Olsen went into the room where she had slept and closed the door. Did anyone notice that I hadn’t been asked what I wanted?
“You know, if you hurry and find Neils before he gets started on some project, I’m sure he’d run you into town to register that claim,” Anna told me.
